things in a bottle
by Ysavvryl
Summary: Some of the most painful scars are those that cannot be seen. SMT IV Apocalypse post-game


**things in a bottle**

"Ah, here you are."

Flynn lifted his head from his knees, but stayed where he was sitting by the old pear tree, on the shores of Lake Mikado. Isabeau's boots were scuffing up dust on the dirt trail; maybe it would rain tomorrow, maybe it wouldn't. "Did I worry anyone?" he asked. "Sorry."

"It's okay," she said, stopping nearby. "Sometimes you just need some time to yourself. Although, everyone in town was asking where you were; I hadn't seen you since early in the morning either, so I came looking. Do you mind if I sit with you?"

"Go ahead," Flynn said, then shifted his arms to the top of his knees to look out over the lake. This landscape… he'd like to say it never changed, but there was now a huge gaping hole off in the distance. Ginza would be below… that hole was proof in a way, that Mikado mirrored Tokyo below.

She said she wanted to teach them, but let her followers perish if their strengths didn't match their ambitions. To face someone who stated they would lay their life down for their beliefs and meant it was unsettling. And it wasn't only the Ring of Gaia willing to become sacrifices. Flynn hadn't seen it, but he knew… that Jonathan and Walter…

Next to him, Isabeau gave a soft sigh. Flynn glanced over at her. So much had happened, they both knew far more than they had when they had accepted the gauntlets. But they remained. It was a sickening guilt some days, that many of Mikado had their eyes similarly opened by Lilith and those ones had all perished as demons. Even Issachar… eyes darkened by blood, shining white tears of despair on a face drained of color… no one should…

Then she got flustered herself. "Oh, sorry, I was just thinking. Guess you are too, since things have slowed down some."

"Yeah," Flynn said.

"I keep feeling like I should have noticed, that time when Shesha was pretending to be you," Isabeau said. "It's obvious looking back on it, but I bought into those lies too. Most of what he said seemed so much like you, except, you let your actions speak more than your words. We had filled the Chalice of Hope, so when he got up and started speaking, I thought that doing all those quests made you more confidant with speaking up if it inspired the hope to stay strong. But then Asahi died, well, nearly died for good. Nozomi had told her that she'd know best if Nanashi had changed drastically because of Dagda, so I should have noticed you'd changed too drastically."

"It worked out," Flynn said.

Although, it made him think. He seen Shesha stealing his identity, seen that snake turned into something familiar and something not. That voice hadn't been his, but it had sounded like his in recording. And the face, it wasn't like he sometimes saw himself in the lake's reflection, but it was his. They'd also stolen things from much deeper, where no one should be able to reach. Those things might not be returned.

"Right, it did," Isabeau said.

At one time, he'd been told that his choices would create a new world. It had seemed like an unbelievable dream, but things happened… like Naverre's vain antics that got him strung up in a nightmarish situation, and he died much later after he was thought to be saved… and kept happening… those children in grubby clothes really thought they were in a wonderful place, but then what they became, it was worse than cattle… and then all the choices were stolen away from him. Everything he'd accomplished opened the gaps for something much worse to creep in.

"Flynn?" Isabeau asked, worried. She put a hand on his shoulder.

It startled him into realizing that he was crying. "It worked out," he repeated, trying to close back up. But that…

"For being the one to unite everyone, your mind is still closed to certain things," a fingernail traced along the bridge of his nose, "for certain things."

...wasn't possible anymore…

"Put it in and keep working, hmm?" Something was shattered, something that he depended on for security. And that was stolen from him, from deep within where no one should have been able to reach.

…"but not for everyone."

The sun was going down. They should probably head back. Instead, Flynn kept his eyes closed. He felt so weak and utterly spent; he should apologize for breaking down like that when he should have been listening to her. But, she'd seen him broken and weeping now. There was nothing to do but trust her to be a keeper of his secrets. He could trust her more than those who'd simply stolen them.

Isabeau fiddled with the cord he kept his hair tied back with. He had his head on her lap now; maybe she was trying to get his attention, but wasn't sure about disturbing him. Or maybe the cord had shifted. It ended up coming undone. "Oh, sorry."

"Don't worry about it," he said.

For a little while, it was silent betwen them. Cicadas were out with their shrill songs; fish occasionally made the water ripple. It was familiar, a special place. But he had changed, enough that he'd be unrecognizable to himself. Flynn didn't know if he could talk to his old self. While the world could heal from old scars and move on, it seemed uncertain for him who'd accepted that destiny without realizing what it would mean.

"You can talk with me about anything, if you want to," Isabeau said, putting her hand through his hair. "You let me talk with you about anything at all, but you don't speak much for yourself. Of course you would be suffering too."

Talk about things… for a moment, he felt like not. It didn't feel right; it wasn't… well, he knew what it was. It was many things he'd been taught before becoming a samurai that were sticking firm in spite of him learning how much the old Mikado strangled the souls of its citizens. It was hard to forget that hold, harder to move out of it. At least, not without completely shattering into something else, like Issachar, and Walter. Maybe even Jonathan.

Flynn shifted around so he was lying on his back, looking up at her. She still had some of his black hair in her fingers; he took her hand. Her grip assured him that it could be okay. "My father told me that everyone has a bottle of things they keep inside them. Things you feel, things you think, memories, lessons, all that. It makes you who you are. So it's important to keep your bottle of things safe. At the same time, you can get distracted or lost looking through that bottle too much. So when things happen, bad or good, you put it away in the bottle and keep working."

"I see," she said. "You did do that a lot, kept working no matter how bad things were getting."

"Yeah," he said, looking at their fingers intertwined. "We had a lot of labor-intensive plants and animals in Kichigorgi. You could be out in the fields from sunup to sundown, plucking out pests and weeds, taking care of the animals. Or staying indoors spinning wool, churning butter, keeping the flour mill going. Now that I think about it, many people there were quiet. They were taught the same things by their fathers and mothers, to keep working no matter what happened to you. When I was seven, I got ill during the time of sowing. I kept out there planting seeds with the rest until I fainted with fever, and the adults praised me for my work ethic."

"Really?" she asked, concern and surprise in her expression. "The monastery wanted us to have a good work ethic, but nothing to that extent."

Flynn nodded. "There was so much work to do and it never felt like there were enough hands to get it all done. We didn't talk about things that would be distracting. Well, we weren't supposed to. You could talk about the farms, and about God's teachings… the weather, sometimes about family. Nothing distracting, nothing that could cause pain by sharing pain. Except, if you had someone close enough that they became a keeper of secrets. Not a lover or even your spouse, although it was considered ideal if your spouse could also be a keeper of secrets. I had one."

"Issachar?" she asked.

He nodded again. "It was sort of an accident it happened, but, we were brought along to the capitol one year as boys, for a national festival. And he blurted out to me in excitement that he wanted to become a samurai. That was a dream, one that we were told early on that it wouldn't come true. It's the kind of thing you shouldn't talk about because it raised undue expectations, and eventually disappointment. But I agreed with him, and from then on we talked about a lot of things we weren't allowed to otherwise. We even practiced out in the forest together, since it was frowned upon for us kids to prepare for anything other than the farm work we were always doing.

"But, it didn't work out." He closed his eyes. "That's the kind of thing you should put away in your bottle of things, and move on. Keep working because the work is never done. But, Krishna had other ideas. That way of thinking acted as a block in my mind that kept him from doing what he wanted with me."

Isabeau stroked his forehead, maybe thinking it'd help. But it made him shudder. Fortunately, she stopped right away. "Flynn..."

"He got into my mind and broke my bottle of things," he said. "Now everything that's happened to me, everything that is me, it's all scattered in a mess. Something will remind me of one thing, which reminds me of another, and so much of it is like swallowing sharp pieces of glass. When Nanashi took over leading, I was fine with letting hm. I wanted to keep working, as I always have. But I didn't have the presence of mind anymore to lead. Following him, even on that ambitious mission, was something to focus on. Now I don't know what I should be doing. Everything is still broken and scattered, and I don't know where to begin in putting things back together again."

She tightened her grip, so he looked back up at her face. She watched over him with teary eyes. While he should feel ashamed for causing another pain with his own, it wasn't anything like that. It was a soft glow that couldn't be seen, only felt.

"I think Krishna meant to put me back together," Flynn said. "It's what gods do, I think. I believed in him for a short while. It was a feeling of certainty, that things could be explained again; I felt like that about God when I was younger because that's what we were all taught, and I felt like that about Krishna for that time. But then you called out to me and I realized the real situation of what he meant to do. He was broken too, from losing who he was long ago, and I killed him because he broke me. Even though, I wanted that certainty, to know that things could be right. But he was broken, so maybe he couldn't actually fix me. I still have to find a way to keep going, though, I don't know where anymore."

"I'm not sure what to do either," Isabeau said. "I'm sorry, I wish I could say something more helpful. But you had always just kept going and I didn't think you'd be this badly hurt."

"You're helping already," he said, reaching up to take her hand between both of his. "I didn't mean to cry so long here. But, would you be the keeper of my secrets? You might not have followed that in the capitol, but if you were to be that to me, I'd feel more secure in working things out, and moving on."

She nodded, then tried to wipe away her sympathetic tears. "Sure, Flynn, I'm glad… honored that you'd ask that of me."

"Thank you," he said, feeling comfortable with where he was. "And I'll be the same for you."


End file.
